Global media investigation: 612 Indian firms in tax havens – Indian Express
Only 612 Indian names, mostly businessmen, in the 1.2 lakh names. This vindicates 2ndlook reading on corruption in India.
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or at least 5 years, it has been 2ndlook position that corruption in India is a small problem. All those stories about trillions in Swiss accounts, turned out to be just hot air. Based on 2ndlook at some economic and business realities it was clear that these corruption-in-India claims were just plain flibbertigibbet.
Arvind Kejriwal, Anna-bhau take that. Eat crow now.
Now we have data.
Indians businessmen are a small part of this offshore mechanism. This data is broadly in line with the trend. For India, which is a Top-5 economy, to have so few people in the list proves two things.
One: Indian take on corruption is round-tripped back into India.
Two: Indians generally lack faith in these corporate structures – and would rather hand over money to their CAs, who will handle this for free.
Typically, specialist Indian CAs handle this money on a simple understanding. Only the principal will be returned – and actual investments at the instruction of the beneficiary, if any, will come back to the beneficiary. Otherwise all risks and benefits from the deployment of these funds will be the CAs take.
Three: Indians understand money much better – and can handle it themselves instead of saand-ka-tel (snake-oil) MNC salesmen.
In the next few days we will read and hear more. But on thing is clear. Indian Express will not be able to suppress it – as the same data can be released by other media houses in the rest of the world.
I presume in the next 2-3 months, this data will be publicly available – and data-scraping software will be used by others.
Here is the initial story.
In the biggest global expose of its kind on offshore investments and secret financial transactions, an international group of investigative journalists has found details of more than 1.2 lakh offshore entities and trusts belonging to individuals and companies in more than 170 countries and territories, including India.
These individuals and companies include politicians, the mega rich and tax offenders, among others, who have invested in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, Samoa and other offshore hideaways.
The 612 Indians in this list include two members of Parliament — Lok Sabha Congress MP Vivekanand Gaddam and RS member Vijay Mallya — and several industrialists such as Ravikant Ruia, Samir Modi, Chetan Burman, Abhey Kumar Oswal, Rahul Mammen Mappillai, Teja Raju, Saurabh Mittal and Vinod Doshi.
The list also includes businessmen who have had a brush with authorities such as the Income-Tax department and the CBI. Several of the offshore investments were made in possible violation of RBI and FEMA rules.
Details of these transactions were contained in 2.5 million secret files and accounted for more than 260 gigabytes of data. They were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and their total size is more than 160 times larger than the leak of the US State Department documents by Wikileaks in 2010.
Based in Washington DC, ICIJ (www.icij.org) is an independent network of reporters who work together on cross-border investigations. ICIJ collaborated with 38 media organisations around the world, including the The Indian Express, for this ambitious global project and to analyse the documents. The other media partners include The Washington Post in the US, The Guardian and BBC in Britain, Le Monde in France and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
The 15-month long investigation has found that alongside perfectly legal transactions, the secrecy and lax oversight offered by the offshore world allows fraud, tax dodging and political corruption to thrive. The expose has also thrown light on the functioning of “nominee directors” in offshore companies, several of whom have also been engaged by Indian patrons of offshore companies.
For instance, a cluster of 28 “sham directors” have been identified as having served as the on-paper representatives of more than 21,000 companies between them, with some individual directors representing as many as 4,000 companies each. The expose comes shortly after a list of 18 Indians who had bank accounts in the LGT Liechtenstein Bank and around 700 Indians who had accounts in HSBC in Geneva became public. In both cases, account holders were prosecuted and paid penalties to Income-Tax authorities for deposits they had made abroad without paying taxes in India.
via Global media investigation finds 612 Indian firms in tax havens – Indian Express.
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- Massive offshore tax haven account leak includes names of 450 wealthy Canadians (business.financialpost.com)
- Leaked Data Names 130,000 Offshore Account Holders (rferl.org)
- Canadian Senator Pana Merchant’s lawyer husband stashed $1.7 million offshore, CBC says (thestar.com)
- Leak exposes identities of wealthy in offshore havens (theweek.co.uk)
- Global media probe exposes secrets of tax havens (vancouverdesi.com)
Christian Madarasas: Making A Comeback?
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Just like the Taliban, modern Christian West can be paranoid about people who eat differently, dress differently. Remember the dot-busters. Or the anti-yoga wave.
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f Islamic madarsas taught Koran and gave rise to Taliban, will we see Christian madarsas and Christian Taliban when Western schools re-start teaching Bible?
Republican Democracies
By the time Napoleon started secular education in France, Christian Taliban reared in Christian madarsas, had already wiped out entire populations in North America and Australia, ravaged the South American and African continents – and killed tens of millions in India and Asia.
Talibanic Roots
The word Taliban comes from talib – that is one who has received taalim – education. Usually at a madarsa. Designed to give competence in Arabic, build knowledge in Quran and Muslim theology, madarsas have long been the backbone of Islāmic education.
Why is post-Napoleonic, secular, State-controlled education system so afraid of religion? Why is the Bible not taught in schools? The Western experience with the Church, Christianity – the persecution and oppression that came along with it, has deeply scarred the people in the West. Knowing the method of religion, Western liberals resist the idea of religion in public life and State support for religion.
But is there a chance of Christian madarsas making a comeback?
Thirty Days and Thirty Nights
The last one month alone has given a strong indication that Christian madarsas may not be a far-fetched idea.
To start with we have a respected business publication the Wall Street Journal giving prominence, through their Op-Ed page, to the idea that Bible must be taught in American schools.
of the many things we say and do every day that have their origins in the most read, most influential book of all time. The Bible has affected the world for centuries in innumerable ways, including art, literature, philosophy, government, philanthropy, education, social justice and humanitarianism. One would think that a text of such significance would be taught regularly in schools. Not so. That is because of the “stumbling block” (the Bible again) that is posed by the powers that be in America.
It’s time to change that, for the sake of the nation’s children. It’s time to encourage, perhaps even mandate, the teaching of the Bible in public schools as a primary document of Western civilization.
We know firsthand of its educational value, having grown up in Europe—Mark in England, Roma in Ireland—where Bible teaching was viewed as foundational to a well-rounded education. Now that we are naturalized U.S. citizens, we want to encourage public schools in America to give young people the same opportunity.
This is one of the reasons we created “The Bible,” a 10-part miniseries premiering March 3 on the History Channel that dramatizes key stories from Scriptures. It will encourage audiences around the world to open or reopen Bibles to understand and enjoy these stories.
Teaching the Bible is of course a touchy subject. One can’t broach it without someone barking “separation of church and state” and “forcing religion down my throat.”
Yet the Supreme Court has said it’s perfectly OK for schools to do so, ruling in 1963 (Abington School District v. Schempp) that “the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as a part of a secular (public school) program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”
The Supreme Court understood that we’re not talking about religion here, and certainly not about politics. We’re talking about knowledge. The foundations of knowledge of the ancient world—which informs the understanding of the modern world—are biblical in origin. Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president known more as a cigar-chomping Rough Rider than a hymn-signing Bible-thumper, once said: “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”
Interestingly enough, the common desktop reference guide “The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy” best sums up the Bible’s value as a tool of cultural literacy. Its first page declares: “No one in the English speaking world can be considered literate without a basic knowledge of the Bible.”
via Roma Downey and Mark Burnett: Why Public Schools Should Teach the Bible – WSJ.com.
More Important Than The Bible
There are more important parts of Western civilization that probably need studying – which are now hidden. To start with, how about the pagan past – before Christian misrule, oppression and persecution killed all alternatives – except the One Book. Tired of Church oppression and persecution, Western liberals are wary of a Bible comeback.
700 years ago, Cristian authorities governing Europe resisted the idea of using the decimal system – invented in India, adopted by the Arabs and spread across the world by Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire. To see how important this was for Europe, try multiplying using Roman numbers DCLXXVIII (678) with DCCLXXXIX (789).
Could Europe’s 500 year leap of technology have happened without Indian decimal system?
Yoga teacher Jackie Bergenon at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, California, USA – conducting a yoga class. Credit: Eduardo Contreras / U-T San Diego; source & courtesy – latimes.com
Yoga & Islam
A few years ago, in November 2008, Islāmic clerics in Malaysia declared that yoga was un-Islāmic. A few weeks later, Indonesian clerics added their voice to Malay’s Islāmic voices against yoga – and to be shunned by Muslims. Indians (especially the Right Wing types) nodded their heads, with an expression that said, “I told you so!”
Western media has been quick to pounce on this anti-yoga attitude as Islāmic fundamentalism. Curiously, Islāmic attitudes against yoga were probably inspired by Christian tirade against yoga since the 80s. When Playboy releases a nude yoga tutorial, you can be sure that yoga has truly arrived in the US. Estimated at more than US$3 billion (Rs.15000 crores), a few years ago, with 15-20 million (1.5 crore) users, yoga is no passing fad in the US.
If Not Ban, License It
Conservative, Christian America is doing everything possible to stop yoga.
Starting with licenses and regulation, going to stories planted in New York Times on the ‘harm’ that yoga can cause, to a conspiracy theory that yoga is a plot by Hindu ‘missionaries’ to convert Christian Americans. Canada is not far behind in this anti-yoga activism by the Church.
A few parents are resisting yoga in American schools. Their suit filed in California courts seeks to stop yoga from schools.
Reason: Yoga is religious indoctrination, ‘inherently and pervasively religious, having its roots firmly planted in Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and western metaphysical religious beliefs and practices.‘
Christian yoga teachers, like Tara Guber, have tried to handle theological objections from Christians by stripping all ‘Hindu’ elements from yoga.
Assertions like these from Christians that seek to strip yoga from its Hindu roots drive Hindu yoga experts up the wall. Subhas R. Tiwari, a professor at the Hindu University of America who holds a master’s degree in yoga philosophy, states: “Such efforts [to Christianize yoga] point to a concerted, long-term plan to deny yoga its origin. This effort . . . is far from innocent. It is reminiscent of the pattern evident throughout the long history and dynamics of colonizing powers” (“Yoga Renamed is Still Hindu,” Hinduism Today, January-February-March 2006). Tiwari believes efforts to Christianize yoga are unjust “encroachment” and thinly veiled Christian proselytism of Hindus.
Rajiv Malhotra of the Infinity Foundation, joins this issue with conservative Christians – confirming that yoga does have a philosophy which goes deeper than simple body positions and physical exercises – which undercut the savior-approach of Christianity.
Prejudice and paranoia. Like in the case of the Russian ‘Barbie Doll!
‘Barbie’ Valeria on the beach | Image source & courtesy – thesun.co.uk
From Russia, With Love
Known for her Barbie-doll like looks, apart from her native Ukraine, media attention from the British media has been widespread. Her videos have been a YouTube sensation, with more than ten million hits. And a million followers on Facebook.
Reportedly, a meditation practitioner, Valeria Lukyanova sports a bindi, teaches at a spirituality school. Known to her students as Amatue – from the Atlantean language, meaning “Goddess of the Sun.”
After becoming a vegetarian, she is practicing how to use prana in yogic way, to sustain her life. For long a heavy alcohol user, she now lives on fruit juices and chutney-like vegetable purées.
For some time, her very existence was in question. Her appearance seemed photo-perfect – apart from one breast-augmentation surgery, she is supposedly ‘real’, without plastic surgery.
There is nothing in her background that is known, which can lead the media to be critical of her. Without a criminal record, with no known underworld links, there is no reason for media to be critical of her. Not even drugs. Not hungry for media attention, British newspaper The Independent reported “after much persuasion, Ms Lukyanova agreed to meet The Independent for lunch”.
Valeria Lukyanova with mother Irina | Image source & courtesy – thesun.co.uk
So why is this British journo so dismissive about Valeria ‘Barbie’ Lukyanova? Is it because she does not eat beef, steak – but instead ‘a glass of freshly squeezed celery and carrot juice, mixed together with a trio of gloopy Indian chutneys into a devilish cocktail.’ Explaining herself, to this prejudiced journo, while ‘taking small sips of the slimy drink.’
Is Shaun Walker worried about ‘Lukyanova’s spirituality, which she propagates online and teaches in a series of lectures and seminars, is based on vegetarianism and meditation.’ while ‘not linked to any religion, though she admits it draws much from Buddhism.’ Is Shaun Walker negative because, ‘Lukyanova remains the best known of the dolls and her “spiritual teachings” and as ‘found a receptive audience among many young women’. The entire post is dripping with paranoia and innuendo – against a harmless, pretty 23-year old girl from Ukraine.
Why. Just Why? WHY?
Related Articles
- Why I Hate Hot Yoga. ~ Maya Georg (elephantjournal.com)
- Protesting Yoga in Schools, But Welcoming Bible Study (richarddawkins.net)
- Yoga Clichés that Must Die. ~ Maya Georg (elephantjournal.com)
- History Channel THE BIBLE Highest Ratings on Cable in 2013 (americanlivewire.com)
- Rewriting the Bible: The Gospel According to Liberals (newsbusters.org)
- “The Bible” Leads to Perception Gains for History Channel Among Conservatives, Christians (forbes.com)
- Bible book fair opens on a colourful note (thehindu.com)
Islamic World: Last 100 Years
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Fundamentalist Islam has, apart from the solitary success of increasing enlistment, delivered nothing on political governance, economic growth, social justice, modernization of education or even military preparedness..
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August 1953: Scenes from the coup that Iran will not forget.
y the middle of the 19th century (1850), decline of Islamic empires was truly and completely real.
Empires Of Islam
After a 1000 years of expansion and dominance, by 1850 just two declining Islamic powers were left to compete on the world’s imperial stage. One was the Mughal Empire that controlled India. An India, that was: –
- The world’s largest economy
- World’s largest industrial producer
- Biggest gunpowder manufactory
- With the largest gold reserves
- Enviable with shipbuilding capacity and technology
- A steel industry whose output was in demand the world over.
The other major Islamic Empire was the Ottoman Empire, centered in modern Turkey, that controlled a geography from the borders of Iran to the outskirts of Europe.
From Western Seas
Opposing these Islamic Empires were the Christian colonial Empires of Spain & Portugal, France and Britain.
The first challenge to the Christian colonial Empires came from India – with the Anglo-Indian War of 1857.
Stretching over a period of nearly two years, the alliance was nominally headed by the Mughal Emperor, and the war was mainly between the Marathas and a mercenary army of Indian soldiers, raised and equipped by the British. The war-chests of Maratha-Mughal alliance were puny compared to the British capital – bolstered by huge capital inflows from slave trade, slave plantations of sugar and tobacco, apart from piracy, loot and plunder.
Within two years, the Mughal Empire was over.
Minor Islamic kingdoms of Egypt and Persia ruled at British sufferance. The Ottoman Empire folded up 60 years later.
In 1920.
Street scenes from August 1953 coup in Iran.
Under Western Thumbs
Nearly a 100-years after the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic world is still ruled by Western puppets.
In Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Egypt – or a Turkey which is happy being at the periphery of every Western alliance – CENTO, European Union, etc.
Under Nasser or Yasser Arafat, people mobilization was a political movement – the agenda being independence from Western subjugation.
All these movements succumbed to religious obscurantism after the overthrow of Shah Of Iran. Iran’s incendiary mix of religion and anti-American politics found a Sunni resonance in Saudi Arabia with a Wahhabi revival. Pakistan turned from Deobandi to Wahhabi strains of Islam.
Desperate situations call for desperate …
The use of fundamentalist Islam has been successful in increasing citizen enlistment against the West. Apart from the solitary success of increasing enlistment, the Shia-Sunni consensus on fundamentalism has delivered nothing on political governance, economic growth, social justice, modernization of education or even military preparedness. This uni-dimensional agenda of ‘modern’ Islam has many detractors within and outside the Islamic world.
In the last 40-odd years
Recently released classified information and memoirs by retired spies, provide a more complex picture of the CIA, its effectiveness, and its overall power, suggesting that at times Langley was manned not by James Bond clones but by a bunch of keystone cops. My favorite clandestine CIA operation, recounted in Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, involves its 1994 surveillance of the newly appointed American ambassador to Guatemala, Marilyn McAfee. When the agency bugged her bedroom, it picked up sounds that led agents to conclude that the ambassador was having a lesbian love affair with her secretary. Actually, she was petting her two-year-old black standard poodle.
But the CIA’s history does include efforts to oust unfriendly regimes, to assassinate foreign leaders who didn’t believe that what was good for Washington and Wall Street was good for their people, and to sponsor coups and revolutions. Sometimes the agency succeeded.
Topping the list of those successes—if success is the right word for an operation whose long-term effects were so disastrous—was the August 1953 overthrow of Iran’s elected leader and the installment of the unpopular and authoritarian Shah in his place. Operation Ajax, as it was known, deserves that old cliché: If it didn’t really happen, you’d think that it was a plot imagined by a Hollywood scriptwriter peddling anti-American conspiracies.
Book cover of Ervand Abrahamian’s The Coup.
Ervand Abrahamian isn’t a Hollywood scriptwriter but a renowned Iranian-American scholar who teaches history at the City University of New York. With The Coup, he has authored a concise yet detailed and somewhat provocative history of the 1953 regime change, which the CIA conducted with the British MI6. If you don’t know anything about the story, The Coup is a good place to start. If you’ve already read a lot about Ajax and the events that led to it, the book still offers new insights into this history-shattering event.
Abrahamian constructed his narrative by analyzing documents in the archives of British Petroleum, the British Foreign Office, and the State Department as well as the memoirs of the main characters in the drama. These characters—British spies and business executives, American diplomats and journalists, Soviet agents, Communist activists, Nazi propagandists, Shiite mullahs, Iranian crime bosses—have double or even triple agendas to advance as they jump from one political bed to another and back, lying, cheating, stealing, and killing. It all makes the CIA-led extraction of the American hostages in Iran, depicted in the film Argo, look kind of, well, boring.
On one side there was Muhammad Mossadeq, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, a secular, liberal, and nationalist leader who wanted to join the “neutralist” camp that disavowed commitment to either of the superpowers during the Cold War. An aristocratic and eccentric figure who welcomed foreign officials into his house wearing pajamas, Mossadeq introduced many progressive social and economic reforms into the traditionally Shiite society, and sent shock waves across the world when he moved to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
On the other side there was Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, Jr., Teddy’s grandson, a legendary spymaster, a self-promoter who dined with major world leaders and business executives but also befriended power-hungry Iranian military generals, corrupt politicians, merchants in the bazzar, and quite a few thugs, who helped him achieve what became Washington’s goal: to remove Mossadeq and his political allies, which included liberals, social democrats, and Communists, from power; to return the oil industry into British hands (with more American presence in Iran’s oil business); and to place reliable pro-western politicians in power.
It seemed to work beautifully. The United States gained a key strategic ally in the Middle East. American companies received a considerable share of Iran’s enormous oil wealth. Other oil-producing Middle Eastern nations got a lesson in what might happen if they nationalized. At a time when the Americans were facing challenges from nationalists such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and were trying to contain the so-called Soviet threat in the Middle East, Our Man in Tehran welcomed American soldiers and investors (and purchased a lot of American weapons). It all looked good until it didn’t.
While the coup did set back the nationalization of the oil resources in the Middle East, the delay ended in the 1970s. In that decade, Abrahamian writes, one country after another—not just radical states such as Libya, Iraq, and Algeria, but conservative monarchies such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia—“took over their oil resources, and, having learned from the past, took precautions to make sure that their oil companies would not return victorious.”
At the same time, the coup decimated the secular opposition, leaving Shiite clerics as the most viable political force when the Iranian Revolution deposed the Shah in 1979. The pro-American puppet gave way to a radical and anti-American Islamic Republic where the secular and liberal opposition remains weak and leaderless. That, as they say in Langley, is blowback.
The coup also intensified what Abrahamian calls the “intense paranoid style prevalent throughout Iranian politics.” While the Iranian clerics worry that Washington wants to do a rerun of the 1953 regime change, many members of the opposition are counting on that to happen. In Tehran, they still think the CIA makes the world turn around.
Related Articles
- New Light on the CIA Coup in Iran on its 60th Anniversary: Why “Argo” Needs a Prequel (Sternfeld) (juancole.com)
- Robert Scheer: Oscar 2013: Hollywood’s CIA Celebration (huffingtonpost.com)
- Putting the Iran “Threat” in Perspective (counterpunch.org)
- Even if Iran gets the Bomb, it won’t be worth going to war (telegraph.co.uk)
Must India Curb Gold Imports: Why It’s A Bad Idea
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India imports 800 tons of the 2500 tons of gold produced each year. This creates pressures on the dollar-currency architecture of the modern world. What can India do to resist US pressures on this front?
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Gold smuggling has gained a new life with higher import duties on gold to curb rising demand, according to Indian financial intelligence agencies | Graphic source & courtesy – economictimes.com
ourteen months ago, in December 2011, as the Western world took a break for Christmas, India and China took simultaneous actions to restrict demand gold in their respective markets.
Chindia in Tandem
China, till December 2011, was installing gold-ATMs to ramp up gold buying by its citizens.
Government of India (GoI) was tweaking policy (gold loans attracted zero-risk weightage in bank capital provisioning norms) to aid multi-billion corporations like Muthoot Finance to expand the gold-loans market.
And then the tune changed.
In India, the Prime Minster’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) took a strident anti-gold stand. In the last 13 months, India has increased import tax by nearly 850% on gold – from a flat Rs.200/10 gm to 6% (roughly Rs.1700/10 gm at current prices & exchange rates).
In China, the Government cracked down on gold importers.
Dollar Drought
Three months before these concerted actions by India-China, in September-December 2011, as gold prices dropped from US$ 1900 to US$1600, global banking was seized by an acute dollar-scarcity.
Banks in Europe were raising money by using gold as collateral. India, the world’s largest importer of gold was particularly affected. The Indian rupee became Asia’s worst performing currency. India rushed to sign a US$15 billion of credit line from Japan.
China assured credit lines to some of its favored trading partners. Six months later, Africa got from China US$20 billion. Some US$10 billion of Chinese credit went to nations in Central and Eastern Europe and another US$10 billion to various Latin American countries came from China. Even before this, Chinese telecom firms made breakthroughs in Latin-America with credit.
A dollar-drought while the US was busy flooding the world with dollars?
A dollar shortage while Ben Bernanke is pumping trillions of dollars in the world economy?
As the difference increased in Indian and international gold prices, smuggling of gold too is making a comeback.
Gold Tail That Wags the US dollar?
In the last 18 months, any drop in gold prices favored the dollar in the dollar:rupee trade.
Any drop in dollar-price of gold has been coupled with an increase in dollar price against the rupee. As a result, Indians had to spend more rupees to buy gold that was worth fewer dollars.
Now, this is strange!
On a long-term basis, gold has no positive, negative, inverse, divergent, convergent correlation with any other commodity, or exchange-traded stock. So why this short-term coupling of rupee:dollar:gold.
Is there a central bank consensus, including(?) Reserve Bank Of India (RBI), that the Indian consumer should not benefit from price-drops in gold?
Trade Deficit … Anyone?
India’s current account deficit i.e., exports + inward remittances less imports = current account deficit (CAD), is running at less than 6% – up from less than 3% at the start of the Great Recession.
Exports to a world in the grip of the Great Recession have grown slowly while imports-increase into a growing Indian economy is faster. While the Indian CAD situation needs addressal, it is by no means alarming.
It is well-known and widely-accepted that vast sectors of the Indian economy are not measured or monitored by official statistics. Hence, Indian GDP is understated. It is not surprising that Indian GDP measured on a nominal basis (US$1.85 trillion) is less than 42% of the figure obtained when measured on the basis of purchasing power (US$4.46 trillion).
Indian Gold Imports
Keeping these factors in mind, a CAD that is higher by 2% of India’s nominal GDP means a gap of about US$35 billion – no large sum for the Indian economy. Anyway, since a large part of Indian imports is gold, it further reduces the cause and need for alarm.
Ostensibly, India’s CAD situation is due to gold, India’s second largest import, according to GoI. The Indian Government has targeted gold for its policy-intervention attention. Prima facie, US$60 billion gold imports cannot be the issue for a US$2 trillion economy. There are good reasons to believe that this policy intervention by the GoI is happening under US pressure – because Indian gold imports account for one-third of total mine production of gold in a year.
In the past …
The Indian Government’s “management” of the rupee-dollar till the 1970’s meant the rupee at a higher value. Over the 1980s and early nineties in a series of devaluations, Indian rupee’s over-valuation was corrected. Before that, there was a massive arbitrage opportunity between official exchange-rates and a thriving black market.
A blogger who has been travelling to this part of the world writes
“…in 1969 a dollar fetched 13 rupees, although you could buy 28 rupees for a dollar in Switzerland and 40 rupees for a dollar in Kabul. The official exchange rate is now 38.50 rupees for a dollar, a nice deal”
This high rupee-value gave rise to an active black market in foreign exchange, supported by gold smuggling into India; drug transshipment out of India from the Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle. This drug+gold trade spawned a huge crime wave of global proportions.
Artificial valuation of the rupee made exports uncompetitive; imports cheap – for which there was no foreign exchange. India regularly had meetings with AID India Consortium and elaborate cases for borrowings were made. The trade deficit remained.
Will things be different this time? I am sure that a few people in the Central Bank consensus group who think that this time, it will be different.
How serious is the smuggling problem?
Gold imports through Thailand have increased as India has a free trade agreement with Thailand that allows gold imports at !1% instead of 6% | Image source & courtesy – economictimes.indiatimes.com…
Why is the RBI Wrong?
RBI’s anti-gold policy is definitely misplaced.
Indian gold imports at 800+ tons are a cause of disequilibrium, with global production at some 2500 tons.
So be it.
India is at the receiving end of a bad deal in agricultural subsidies, foreign exchange reserves, technology imports, UN, IMF, World Bank – not to forget a bad deal in oil.
It is not like India controls global gold mines or production. Or is India in any position to stop other buyers from purchasing gold? Unfair apart, why must GoI + RBI take unilateral steps to restrict gold imports into India?
Currency Printing: Like every other central bank in the world, the RBI also has been printing too many rupees. Unlike the rest of the world, Indian consumers have been sterilizing excessive printing of the Indian rupee by buying gold. This way, the market automatically sterilizes excess rupee liquidity.
More taxes is more profits for smugglers: The higher the difference between international prices and official prices, higher the profit margin for illegal imports.
In fact, raising of duty has only enhanced the profit margin of smugglers,” said a senior DRI official who did not want to be identified. (via Gold smuggling on the rise as imports turn costlier – Livemint).
“As of now, gold smuggling is limited to air passengers and carriers, which has limitations in terms of volume and cost. The bulk smuggling channels (by sea and land) have not revived, but the recent increase in customs duty will provide the profit differential to revive it,” said a senior customs official who too did not want to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue. This person added that it would be impossible for enforcement agencies to contain smuggling through these routes. (via Gold smuggling on the rise as imports turn costlier – Livemint).
Trade Deficit: Is this increase in Customs likely to reduce India’s trade deficit? Unlikely. It will increase capital-flight to offshore financial centres – from where foreign-exchange earnings will get higher returns than in India. Higher customs or other barriers will mean more (and more) policy interventions that will increase compliance overload and reduce policy-impact.
If the proposed duties do indeed lead to more smuggling, though it would not appear in India’s balance sheet, it could continue to pressure the Indian rupee, which has been losing value against the U.S. dollar in recent months. (via Gold Smuggling Redux in India? – India Real Time – WSJ).
Questioning the anti-gold logic of the Govt apart, increasing customs duties from 2% to 6% will not change a 2000-yr of gold tradition | Graphic source & courtesy – economictimes.com
End of Bretton Woods: No fiat currency system has lasted for more than 75 years.
The Bretton-Woods system, pinned to the US dollar has morphed from a gold-based to an oil-based currency. In the last ten years, the petro-dollar surplus has decreased – and US debt has ballooned to US$17 trillion – 125% of US GDP. Add US consumer debt and corporate debt, and we are talking US debt at about 300% of US GDP.
Euro-Yuan Challenge: Euro-currency has not broken down. Not quite what Anglo-Saxon Media (ASM) has pushed us to believe. – in line with 2ndlook estimate of 2 years now. ASM also pushed the case of a Chinese hard-landing very hard. But the Chinese hard-landing is nowhere in sight. So, the Euro and Yuan are likely to increase their share in global trade. From nearly 90% of global trade, the US dollar share of trade has reduced to about 67%. As it gets close to 50%, (probably) in the next 7-10 years, we may see a greater role for gold as an objective cross-currency index. Gold trade will only increase in importance.
Rise Of The Underworld: Will we want to give the Indian narcotics-gold underworld a greater hold over the Indian economy – like it was 25 years ago. Like the narcotics-gold underworld dominates Pakistan or Afghanistan now.
Safety Net: In the face of global or local dislocations (due to drought, floods, earthquakes, war, epidemics) private gold reserves can help families to restart lives. Even without State support.
Much of the reason for Indian economic equilibrium over the last 65 years, has been the India’s private reserves of gold.
Let’s See Action
Covering a gap of US$35 billion means looking at three big targets of US$12 trillion each.
1. Increase oil refinery exports (set up two more Jamnagar type refineries), increase domestic crude output (split ONGC into four parts?) and shrink oil imports.
2. Fund 10,000 SMEs with credit for expansion and growth to add about US$12-US$15 trillion of output. Privatize city bus services and privatize train operations.
3. Sign a Third-World rupee-trade FTA, which will boost exports to the Third World by US$12 billion and replace dollar imports with rupee imports.
It is these measures which will yield answers to the Indian CAD problem – instead of curbs, taxes and barriers to gold imports.
But then …
What was on the Plate?
In October last year, the US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner and the Chief of the US Federal Reserve were on a two-day India visit – en-route to Tokyo to attend some IMF and World Bank meetings.
Any bets on Geither and Bernanke’s main item on the India-visit agenda was gold?
Anyone?
The depth of the global gold market with a large Indian diaspora makes it easy to avoid excessive taxation – a short step from criminal smuggling. | Graphic source & courtesy – economictimes.com
Aww … another conspiracy theory?
John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA hosts since WWII the Warfare Analysis Laboratory – a part of its Applied Physics Lab. Used frequently by the Pentagon, in 2009, a unique war simulation was conducted here.
Not a nuclear or a conventional war, not even a biological or chemical war – but an economic and financial war. Simulating how an Economic Hit Man from other countries would operate, its effect on the US and the US response.
Two years after this simulation, one of the participants, James Rickards has published a book outlining some of the presumably basic models used in the exercize.
All these actions point towards a declining US using more desperate means to stay on top.
For how long?
Rising Chorus … Within and Without
All these points are well-known and understood within sections of GoI. By the Indian and global press.
Some extracts below.
Gold smuggling has acquired a new lustre with imposition of higher import duties on the yellow metal to curb rising demand, financial intelligence agencies have said, warning of a sudden resurgence of underworld activity.
Import duty on gold has risen from nil to 6% in the last 12 months. Incidents of smuggling have seen an upswing recently.
Officials in the finance ministry fear that return of gold smuggling will revive Mumbai’s underworld, which thrived on the practice until the economic liberalisation of the early 1990s.
They say a rise in the illegal gold imports will undermine the government’s strategy to curb gold imports to check a runaway rise in current account deficit, which touched a record high of 5.4% of GDP in the first half of 2012-13.
Some officials said the recent confiscations point to a growing trend of organised networks engaging “carriers”, who are paid between 10,000 and 25,000 for each trip. They said illegal transfer of gold has become more lucrative for these carriers since the hike in import duties, adding that many of them are now resorting to rectal smuggling.
Agencies also fear that smugglers may take to the sea route once again.The authorities say they have seized Rs165 crore worth of gold between April and December 2012, an 11-fold increase over the seizures in the year-ago period.
India, the world’s biggest consumer of gold, imported $56.4 billion worth of the metal in 2011-12, accounting for nearly half of its current account deficit.
The country has already imported gold worth $38 billion this fiscal, prompting the government to raise import duties again by 200 basis points to 6%. Current account deficit widened to a record 5.4% of GDP in the first half of 2012-13, with higher gold and crude oil imports increasing the country’s dependence on foreign capital inflows
via Financial intelligence agencies sound alert on gold smuggling – The Times of India.
Gold smugglers have stepped out of 1970s’ Bollywood potboilers into present day reality with the government raising taxes to curb the import of the yellow metal.
According to data from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), an agency that monitors economic offences, the incidence of gold smuggling in the current fiscal year has zoomed at least eight times compared with the corresponding period the previous year.
As the government struggles to rein in a raging current account deficit that is likely to cross 4% of the national economic output this fiscal, it has increased the import duty on the precious metal thrice since last year.
India’s gold imports, (are) next only to oil imports in terms of value.
The increase in import duty on gold has clearly led to a price differential between Indian and international gold, and that, in turn, has led to an increase in smuggling. Spot gold prices here are as much as 5.7% higher than in Dubai, compared with a difference of 0.1% in 2008. Typically, gold is smuggled into India from Dubai.
In the first 10 months of 2012-13, till January, DRI has seized gold worth Rs.60.17 crore (200kg at the current price of gold) and cracked 36 cases of smuggling. In the corresponding period in 2011-12, it had seized gold worth Rs.7.42 crore and cracked 15 cases.
To be sure, the number is almost insignificant when compared with the value of India’s gold imports—$38 billion (around Rs.2.03 trillion today) till December.
And it refers only to seizures and the gold smuggled into India could be much more; DRI officials admit that they detect about one in every 10 cases.
“The duty rate hike in phases, from Rs.100 per 10g to 6% (about Rs.1,800 at the current price) now, has not really dampened the demand. In fact, raising of duty has only enhanced the profit margin of smugglers,” said a senior DRI official who did not want to be identified.
While the government’s actions are intended at discouraging import of physical gold, DRI and customs officials say the recent 2 percentage point increase in the import duty on the precious metal will make it difficult for enforcement agencies to contain bulk gold smuggling in India.
On 22 January, India raised the import duty on gold to 6% from 4%.
After restrictions were lifted on gold imports and a few commercial banks were allowed to import gold and sell the yellow metal to jewellers and exporters in 1997, the spread between international and local market prices shrank dramatically, but with the rise in import duty, it is now widening.
Modus operandi
Explaining the modus operandi of gold smugglers, the DRI official said most of the smuggled gold is brought into India through air mostly from Dubai and Thailand, concealed in either cabin baggage or different parts of the body. People carrying this gold are called carriers, or mules, and they work in pairs. Going by the data collected by DRI, on average, each mule carries at least 5kg of gold per trip.
According to the DRI official, the return on investment for a smuggler in a year amounts to as much as 200% for such trips.
Here’s how the math works: At the current price, it costs Rs.1.44 crore to buy 5kg of gold in Dubai. The cost of an air ticket, hotel expenses and the commission of the mule plus hawala fees to send the money to Dubai after the gold is sold in India comes to another Rs.2 lakh. The same gold can be sold in Mumbai for Rs.1.51 crore, netting the smuggler Rs.5 lakh for a single trip.
Such an operation typically takes four days. Theoretically, this means a smuggler can churn his initial investment seven times a month. Over a year, that means a profit of Rs.4.2 crore on the original Rs.1.5 crore investment.
“As of now, gold smuggling is limited to air passengers and carriers, which has limitations in terms of volume and cost. The bulk smuggling channels (by sea and land) have not revived, but the recent increase in customs duty will provide the profit differential to revive it,” said a senior customs official who too did not want to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue. This person added that it would be impossible for enforcement agencies to contain smuggling through these routes.
Customs officials also claim their job has been made tougher by a 2011 Supreme Court ruling under which individuals arrested for violating the Customs Act can be released on bail. The apex court’s decision, both officials mentioned above said, has taken away the powers of the customs department to deter smuggling.
via Gold smuggling on the rise as imports turn costlier – Livemint
For some, it’s almost Haji Mastan time again.
There has been a 10-fold increase in the number of gold smuggling cases in recent months. Between April and June this year, authorities impounded gold worth 940 crore in some 200 cases of smuggling, up 272% over the same period last year, finance ministry data shows.
Smugglers make money if they can successfully avoid paying duties – 4% customs duty and other taxes, which add 5%-plus to the landed cost of gold.
via Weak rupee makes gold smuggling, bets attractive – Economic Times.
An increase in the import duty on gold, the third in less than a year, is expected to lead to a rise in smuggling of the precious metal into the country. On Monday, the government hiked the import duty on gold from 4% to 6%.
Air customs officials speculate that more gold will be smuggled from abroad through airports as import duty is now at its steepest.
There has been an increase in smuggling of gold through Chennai from Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries over the past three years.
This is the third time the government has raised import duty on gold. In March 2012, the government doubled import duty on standard gold from 2% to 4%. In January 2012, it increased duty from 1% to 2%. Of the 800 tonnes of gold that India imports every year, one-fourth is accounted for by Tamil Nadu.
While customs officials are apprehensive that they will have to be on their toes, bullion traders are unhappy that high duty will push up attempts to smuggle in gold by evading taxes and will lead to loss of jobs for local goldsmiths.
Jewellers say smugglers, couriers and middleman can make as much as Rs 1,800 for every 10g of gold imported (6% of Rs 30,000).
“With imports of 50kg, the margins can be as high as Rs 1 crore,” said a jeweller who did not want to be named. Jewellers say the government has seized close to 900kg of unaccounted gold in the last year.
Gold smuggling is not new to India; in fact, many villains of Bollywood movies in the late 1970s were often smugglers. One of the most memorable Bollywood smugglers was Lion (pronounced Loyan) played by actor Ajit in movies like Kalicharan and Yaadon Ki Baraat. Even superstar Ambitabh Bachchan was a smuggler in his blockbuster movie in 1975 Deewar.
“In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the price of gold in India was 65% higher than in other countries,” wrote Douglas Farah, a national security consultant in the U.S., in a paper in 2004.
Citing a report by Interpol from the mid-1990s, Mr. Farah said that gold worth $4.2 billion was smuggled into India in 1991.
In the early 1990s, as part of India’s economic liberalization, the Indian government removed the restrictions on importing gold.
This eventually helped lower the price gap between prices in India and abroad.
If the proposed duties do indeed lead to more smuggling, though it would not appear in India’s balance sheet, it could continue to pressure the Indian rupee, which has been losing value against the U.S. dollar in recent months.
The government has raised customs duty on gold in bid to curb imports that are largely responsible for the high current account deficit and weakening currency, but a spurt in smuggling threatens to undermine its efforts.
“The operation is currently on…there was intelligence on a sudden jump in gold jewellery imports from Thailand,” said an official with the organisation privy to the development.
India has a free trade agreement with Thailand that allows gold jewellery imports at a concessional customs duty of 1 per cent.
The duty rates for imports through normal channels are much higher after a steep increase in this year’s budget and goes up to 10 per cent on standard gold bars, gold coins and non-standard gold stand, making Thailand an attractive place for purchases.
Though, stringent rules of origin norms are in place in the FTA to ensure that any goods taking advantage of the concessional duty regime undergoes a substantial value addition in Thailand, DRI is alleging large-scale misuse of these norms by importers.
According to DRI sources, the rules of origin under the FTA envisage a value addition of up to 20 per cent but since gold rates in Thailand are at the same levels at India and value addition can only push up the cost of goods and render gold jewellery imports uncompetitive.
Customs authorities had impounded gold worth 942 crore in some 200 cases of smuggling bettween April and June this year, up 272 per cent on 243 crore corresponding period last fiscal that involved 20 cases.
via DRI cracks down on gold smuggling from Thailand – Economic Times.
Related Articles
- How Much Gold Does China Have?… (dailyreckoning.com)
- China remains top gold producer for sixth year (rediff.com)
- Turkey says won’t halt gold flow to Iran (en.trend.az)
- 10 things to know about gold duty hike (profit.ndtv.com)
- Hiking import duty on gold not a solution (thehindu.com)
- Forex reserves down by $595 mn to $295 bn (news.in.msn.com)
- Indian Central Bank Aims To Transfer Massive Physical Gold Into Banking System (sgtreport.com)
- Standard Bank Says Physical Gold Purchases Unusually High – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
- Impact Of A Proposed Tax Hike On India’s Gold Imports (seekingalpha.com)
- India Scrambles To Make Gold Purchases Ever More Difficult: Hikes Import Tax And Duties Again (zerohedge.com)
Perry, Perry On The Wall … Who’s the Biggest Brother Of All?
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For reasons not quite clear, Perry Anderson does a hatchet job on India, using selective data on police, prisons, surveillance. Better data leads to conclusions different from Perry Anderson’s.
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After millions of agents and billions of dollaqrs … | Cartoon By Dwayne Booth, Mr. Fish – 9/25/2006 12:00:00 AM; source & courtesy – cagle.com
Changing spots
Employed with an American university (UCLA) for 30-years, Perry Anderson, a Marxist professor of British origin, has been completely taken up with India.
Published in July was his first-post, Gandhi Centre Stage (LRB 5 July 2012), and his next post was After Nehru (LRB 2 August 2012). Between these two posts, Perry Anderson has come up with some 33,000 words.
Enough material for a 100-page book.
Follow the money
Cleverly mixed with his reluctant admissions of truths, half-untruths, and complete lies, it is unclear why he has taken up such a project.
Why India?
As a Marxist, wouldn’t Communist China or Socialist Russia be an easier – and more interesting objects for Perry Anderson’s affections? For me, Socialist Germany is the most interesting country-study one can do today.
As a Marxist, it is again rather puzzling that Perry Anderson has so much thinly-veiled pride for colonial-imperial Britain – and such antipathy towards an earnest, wannabe-socialist India.
This is the third of the posts for a 2ndlook at some issues that Perry Anderson raises in his posts.
Perry, Perry on the wall? Should he West not be worried miore about itself? | Justice Is Suspicious Character in Sanford Florida; By RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch – 4/17/2012 12:00:00 AM
Big Brother
Perry Anderson makes an interesting point on India.
the role and character of the army, the Central Reserve Police Force, Border Security Force, Central Industrial Security Force, Home Guards, let alone the clandestine powers and activities of the Intelligence Bureau (a vast military, paramilitary and surveillance complex, totalling upwards of two million operatives), receive even passing mention in most of the literature on the world’s largest democracy.
Perry Anderson does not provide any comparative aggregates, for any other country. Either at a gross level or on a per-capita basis.
Except India.
Perry Anderson expects us to accept his surmise at face-value – without further examination, data or evidence? By not providing comparative data Perry Anderson attempts to imply that the numbers he provides for India is a large number – and other comparable countries are lower.
Which is completely untrue!
But, not to worry!
Cross country statistics are hard to come by. Takes some searching, but on some country pairs, some data is available.
For instance, India and USA.
Increasing data on this subject have been available to 2ndlook readers for the last 5 years.
Does Perry Anderson’s India numbers include army, police, para-military, industrial security forces?
150 years after Emancipation; 50 years after civil rights movement, we are left with this | Disney World By Keith Knight, PoliticalCartoons.com – 3/27/2012 12:00:00 AM
Half Untruths
Let us check out some data to see how valid Perry Anderson’s claim is about India’s ‘vast military, paramilitary and surveillance complex, totalling upwards of two million operatives’.
Before going further let us look at some data on Indian police & military size.
- CRPF – 3 lakhs
- BSF – 2.5 lakhs
- Railway Protection Force – 0.65 lakh
- CISF – 0.25 lakh
- Civilian Police – 10 lakhs
- Total Police – 16 lakhs (total of 1-5 items).
- Indian Armed Forces – 13.25 lakhs
- State Total – 30 lakhs
- Private Security Total – 30 lakhs
I wonder from where does Perry pull out the 2-million figure – when the actual is closer to 3 million?
Let us look at USA – the only Western country close to India in terms of size, diversity, population.
US Police & Military
- US Armed Forces – 15 lakhs
- US Civilian Police – 10 lakhs
- US Secret Police – 30 lakhs
- US Industrial Security – 20 lakhs
- Total US Military & Police apparatus – 75 lakhs
Indian population is 120 crores and the US population is 31 crores. The American military-police apparatus is bigger by 25% for a population, that is a quarter the Indian population.
Bigger technology, larger police, more secret policemen. More prison ers, more killings b y the State. | Cartoon titled Intelligence Bureaucracies By Huffaker, Politicalcartoons.com – 5/8/2006 12:00:00 AM
Macro Numbers
US Census Bureau says, 63% of US population, is between the age of 18-65 – numbering 19.5 crores (from 31 crores). US DoJ data release for the year-2011, says the number of people in correctional system (probation, parole or prison) excluding under prosecution, is more than 70 lakhs – mostly from 18-65 years group. That is 70 lakhs people out of 19.5 crores – nearly 4% (3.63% to be exact).
Anyway you look at it, it is more than any other country in the world.
Each year, the US system has to deal with 2.1 crore people in prison, on probation or parole, or being prosecuted. Ranged against 2.1 crore law-breakers are 60 lakhs in the various types of police plus 10 lakhs in judiciary.
This totals to 2.8 crore people who are law-breakers or law enforcers from a working age population of 19.5 crores. With every seventh adult in the business of (il)legal-activity, makes US clearly a leader of the ‘Free’ World.
Bigger technology, larger police, more secret policemen. More prison ers, more killings b y the State. | Cartoon titled Intelligence Bureaucracies By Huffaker, Politicalcartoons.com – 5/8/2006 12:00:00 AM
Custodial Deaths
Perry Anderson then goes onto wite about the excesses of the Indian Police.
Arvind Verma writes that 53,000 people were arrested under the Terrorism and Disruptive Activities Act, of whom just 434 could be convicted seven years later, he underlines some daily realities of Indian democracy: ‘Torture is routinely practised in most police stations and death in police custody is a frequent phenomenon’
Before looking at Indian numbers, let us look at some American numbers.
In the words of the BoJ-Statistics department report, ‘At yearend 2007, federal and state prisons and local jails held just under 2.3 million inmates (2,293,157).’
The US Bureau of Justice reports a total of 32,834 custodial deaths in the USA for 2001-2007 period. This has been broken up into local prisons with 8,097 inmate deaths from a local prison population of 782,595. This data is for local prisons only – which are lower level prisons. State prisons accounted for 21,936 deaths and Federal prisons for 2801 during 2001-2007, totalling 24,737 custodial deaths in State and Federal prisons for the 2001-2007 period.
This does not include arrest-related deaths.
For India, a activista report gave out the statistics.
“Torture in India 2011” states that a total of 14,231 persons i.e. more than four persons per day died in police and judicial custody in India from 2001 to 2010. This includes 1,504 deaths in police custody and 12,727 deaths in judicial custody from 2001-2002 to 2009-2010 as per the cases submitted to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
These deaths reflect only a fraction of the problem with torture and custodial deaths in India as not all the cases of deaths in police and prison custody are reported to the NHRC.
via 14,231 Persons Died In police And Judicial Custody In India From 2001 To 2010 By Suhas Chakma.
A comparison could be made by taking data on a pro-rata basis. Some 8,900 custodial death among 400,000 prisoners in India (2.23%) compared to nearly 33,000 deaths from a prisoner base of 2 million (1.65%).
This means 19 additional deaths each month in India. Does this speak of unspeakable torture and human abuse in a country of 120 crores, with a State policing apparatus that uses nearly 3 million ‘operatives’?
How many of these deaths could be due to pre-existing illnesses? India after all has the largest numbers of people affected by TB, diabetic, cardiac diseases. Prison conditions could easily result in higher mortality due to these illnesses. Poorer healthcare in Indian prisons?
Is this vastly different from mortality rates between general population in India and USA?
UPSA – United Police State of America
Overwhelming data point towards the fact the US is a police State beyond comparison. With
- 7 million people under some kind of correctional supervision – prison, parole or probation.
- With 2 million prisoners
- Some 3 million employees in US secret services (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc).
- 1 million civilian police as per FBI data
- More than 14 million prosecutions yearly (2002), to keep these 1 million police personnel busy. The US prosecutes more people than the next 45 countries for whom data is available.
It is fashionable in the US to moan over how powerful ‘secret police’ has become of late.
But this is not new.
For 48 years, Edgar Hoover headed FBI. No POTUS (President of the US), no GOTUS (Government of the US), no SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the US) could touch him. He had a file on everyone. Including musicians (like John Lennon) to many Hollywood starlets.
No State has taken so much offence against its own citizens as the GOTUS.
Of late, the US Government made more requests to Twitterto reveal confidential information, than all other Governments in the world put together.
Was the persecution of Julian Assange useful, or essential for any other reason ? | Julian Assange Siege By Paul Zanetti, Australia – 8/16/2012 12:00:00 AM
Police Killing – In India & USPA
Coming to the point about Indian police killing civilians.
First, let us take data for people killed by US-police during line of duty.
Looking for the number of burglaries last year in Devils Lake, N.D.? How about the increase in property crimes in Caribou, Maine? The answers (34 and 23 percent, respectively) are readily available from the FBI.
Want detailed information on how many people were shot by police in the United States last year?
That’s not so easy to find.
The nation’s leading law enforcement agency collects vast amounts of information on crime nationwide, but missing from this clearinghouse are statistics on where, how often, and under what circumstances police use deadly force. In fact, no one anywhere comprehensively tracks the most significant act police can do in the line of duty: take a life.
“We don’t have a mandate to do that,” said William Carr, an FBI spokesman in Washington, D.C. “It would take a request from Congress for us to collect that data.”
Congress, it seems, hasn’t asked.
But let me confess. I am wondering is this is a case running and hiding …
A Pulitzer prize winning investigation by Washington Post, on Washington DC police practices concluded that the
extent and pattern of police shootings have been obscured from public view. Police officials investigate incidents in secret, producing reports that become public only when a judge intercedes. In a small hearing room closed to the public, nine of every 10 shootings are ruled justified by department officials who read the reports filed by investigating officers but generally hear no witnesses.
In the internal records used to track shooting trends, D.C. police undercounted by nearly one-third the number of people they killed from 1994 to 1997, tallying only 29 fatal police shootings. The Post investigation confirmed 43 fatal police shootings in that period. Seven fatal shootings were missing from police shooting trend records, and seven other fatal shootings were mislabeled as nonfatal.
The rise in police shootings in the mid-1990s went largely unnoticed among the top officials charged with policing the police.
“No one said there was a problem with shootings,” said Stephen D. Harlan, former vice chairman of the D.C. financial control board. Former D.C. chief Larry D. Soulsby, who presided over the department from 1995 to 1997, said the rise in shootings “was not a hot topic among police officials.”
Off-duty shootings have added to the total of District police shootings in the 1990s. When shooting incidents peaked in 1995, 36 percent of the shootings occurred while officers were off duty, considerably more than the 17 percent to 22 percent that various studies over the years have found in other large cities. Even more striking, more than half of the District’s 16 fatal shootings in 1995 happened off duty — compared with a national average that ranges from 9 percent to 16 percent, according to a study by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Many experts consider off-duty shootings problematic for several reasons: The officers are not readily identifiable; they may have been drinking; and they are usually acting alone without backup officers, making them more vulnerable and fearful.
The lawsuits that often follow off-duty police shootings have been costly to District taxpayers.
It appears that while FBI is not publishing or releasing this data, it is nevertheless available – as this 2008 report reveals.
The number of justifiable homicides committed by police and private citizens has been rising in the past two years to their highest levels in more than a decade, reflecting a shoot-first philosophy in dealing with crime, say law enforcement analysts.
The 391 killings by police that were ruled justifiable in 2007 were the most since 1994, FBI statistics show. The 254 killings by private individuals found to be self-defense were the most since 1997.
Police are justified, the FBI says, when felons are killed while the officer is acting in the line of duty. Rulings on these deaths are usually made by the local police agencies involved.
Some law enforcement analysts say the numbers represent changing attitudes on the streets, where police have felt more threatened by well-armed offenders.
via FBI: Justifiable homicides at highest in more than a decade – USATODAY.com.
What in the USA are called officer-involved shootings, in India are called police-encounters.
But there is marked difference in the way this has been handled.
Indian courts (including the Supreme Court), media, bureaucrats have been monitoring these cases – and passed strictures on some policemen and departments.
Killings of people from minorities (Muslims in India, like the US Blacks) arouses the systems’ ire. In the Sohrabuddin case, a high-ranking politician (Amit Shah) and a high-ranking police-official (DG Vanzara) are being prosecuted. The Batla House shooting continues to to be debated years after the incident. This is only of course, anecdotal evidence. Quantitative data is also given which dilutes Perry Anderson’s critique to nothing.
Meanwhile in the Washington, DC, USA
Three times in the last three years, police have shot fellow officers, killing two and wounding the third. In all three instances, white officers shot black officers in civilian clothes, including a pregnant female officer, after mistaking them for criminals.
India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has been meticulously compiling data and publishing this data. Media and civil activists have been involved in this. Given below is an extract from a report carried by an American magazine (Time) – which gives indicative data.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who ia is worst of them all. | Lawless OWS Hippies By Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune – 10/27/2011 12:00:00 AM
the violence is for real: public records show he has personally gunned down 87 gangsters in the mean streets of India’s film and organized crime capital since 1990. The 41-year-old’s scorecard has made him the country’s deadliest cop ahead of two other inspectors, Praful Bhosle, 46, and Vijay Salaskar, 45, who have clocked scores of 82 and 40, respectively. All three are from Bombay’s elite Criminal Intelligence Unit, which, as Mob crime spiraled out of control in the early 1990s, was tasked with taking down the bad guys, guns blazing if necessary. Few mobsters went quietly: police shot 71 in “encounters” in 1997, 83 in 1999 and 97 in 2001. In all, since records of shoot-outs began in 1982, police have killed 1,200 gangsters in and around Bombay.
The effect on India’s crime capital has been dramatic. From two a week at the height of the violence in the early 1990s, intergang gun battles are down to two a month. Once almighty syndicates are losing scores of men and millions of dollars because of the disruption to their businesses. Arun Gawli, who describes himself as a former Mafia don, sees himself as a virtual prisoner in his own mansion, living behind a phalanx of armed guards, CCTV and four separate locked gates, out of fear of what he calls “police contract killings.” “In a democracy, these sorts of killings are unlawful,” he says. Gawli, 51, claims he has lost a total of 60 associates to encounters in the past decade. “O.K., there were days a while back when I went astray. But this sort of murder campaign is way beyond acceptable.”
That’s a view shared by human-rights groups. Lawyer Seema Gulati even warns that the “growing trend of police killings” is endangering India’s democratic foundations. “They’re just bumping them off,” she says.
Police bosses counter that they are being criticized merely for being better shots than the Mafia. They add that none of the hundreds of complaints alleging staged shoot-outs or executions filed by victims’ relatives or human-rights groups or even a handful of official inquiries has ever led to a conviction for extrajudicial killing. “The allegations of fake encounters are baseless,” says Pradeep Sawant, Bombay’s deputy police commissioner. “It’s not that we always go to kill. Our idea is to arrest the gangsters. We only retaliate if we’re fired upon.”
Many in India argue that there are few alternatives, since the country’s judicial system is tainted by corruption and crippled by backlog. Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, India’s most famous cop for helping put down the Sikh insurgency in Punjab state in the 1990s, is blunt: “Our legal system doesn’t work at all. If there are no legal remedies, there’ll be extralegal ones.”
By and large, this is a compromise the public accepts. “We know the vast majority of encounters are fake,” says Hindustan Times editor Vir Sanghvi. “We do not think that this is a perfect situation, but in common with the rest of the middle class we have come to the regrettable conclusion that there is no real alternative.” For a professional enforcer like Sharma, success isn’t just measured in body bags or reduced gang violence, but invitations to celebrity parties and near unanimous media praise. “I don’t enjoy killing,” says Sharma. “But after we shoot some mobster, his victims look at me like God. That’s the best part of the job.”
via Urban Cowboys – TIME.
Based on official monitoring of such ‘encounters’ an updated Wikipedia entry gives more data.
According to the National Human Rights Commission of India, there were 440 cases of alleged fake encounters in the country during 2002-2007. Most of these happened in the states of Uttar Pradesh (231), Rajasthan (33), Maharashtra (31), Delhi (26), Andhra Pradesh (22) and Uttaranchal (19).[2]
From 2008-09 to June 2011, NHRC recorded 369 cases of alleged fake encounters. By June 2011, NHRC had resolved 98 of these cases, while the rest were pending settlement. The states with high number of cases were Uttar Pradesh (111), Manipur (60), West Bengal (23), Tamil Nadu (15) and Madhya Pradesh (15).[3]
via Encounter killings by police – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Though officially not published or collated, investigations by civil rights groups reveal indicative data about police officer-involved killings in the US.
The problem of fatal police shootings in America goes beyond a few bad apples. It points to persistent and systemic problems that lead to ongoing tragedies for communities of color. Between 1980 and 2005, close to 9,600 people were killed by police in America — an average of about one fatal shooting every day. However, the real number may be higher due to underreporting by some departments to the federal government. For example, the Los Angeles Police Department responded to a Freedom of Information Act request by claiming there were 79 fatal police shootings from 2000 to 2005. Yet only 38 fatal shootings were reported to the federal government for the same period.
While the precise number may not be clear, it is apparent that fatal shootings are not inevitable. Washington, D.C. had the nation’s highest rate during the 90s. It’s also clear that shootings are not distributed evenly throughout the population. In Chicago, for example, more than two-thirds of the shootings happened in black and Latino neighborhoods, and the majority of the incidents occurred in poor neighborhoods.
African Americans are particularly at risk of being killed by police. Black people were overrepresented among victims in each of America’s 10 largest cities. This contrast was particularly glaring in New York, Las Vegas and San Diego, where the percentage of black people killed was at least double their share of the general population. “There is a crisis of perception where African American males and females take their lives in their hands just walking out the door,” said Delores Jones-Brown, interim director of the Center on Race, Crime and Justice at John Jay College in New York. “There is a notion they will be perceived as armed and dangerous. It’s clear that it’s not a local problem.”
The shootings may be explained in part by implicit bias on the part of police officers, according to research by University of Chicago Professor Joshua Correll. In New York, connecting negative stereotypes with racial identity was considered as a factor in the 1999 fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo and the 2006 shooting of Sean Bell — both of which involved black male victims being killed by more than 40 shots fired by officers.
Another key part of the equation: a disturbing lack of internal accountability from local police departments.
In Chicago, nearly half of the officers sued in those shootings had been sued for previous violations. Most had been sued at least twice. Although being sued does not mean an officer is guilty, multiple lawsuits against the same officer should draw the department’s attention.
Yet little seems to happen to these and other officers accused of killing residents. Chicago’s initial “roundtable” investigations of 85 officers cleared all but one of them — and that officer got a promotion two years later. (Police officials said they did find fault among other officers but could not provide any statistics.)
A similar situation exists in Phoenix, which had the highest rate of fatal police shootings among the nation’s 10 largest cities. Although there were more than 100 incidents of officer-involved shootings in the city during the past five years, and numerous shootings in neighboring jurisdictions, only one shooting in the county has resulted in criminal charges being filed against the officer who fired — and that was for the fatal shooting of a white woman.
This broken system hurts everyone.
Multiple reports and studies seem to converge to an estimate of roughly 400 officer-involved fatalities in USA. The 2008-report extracted above also gives a similar figure. The latest Wikipedia listingof officer-involved fatalities for 2012, of the last 9 months is close to 400. Full year figures will cross 500 – unless there is intervention.
The US Secret Service Colombian prostitute scandal. Secret service agents on the POTUS detail ignored their job – and spent time on hiring prostitutes. | Cartoonist Jimmy Margulies in 2012
So, while in the USA, officer-involved deaths are around 400 per annum. In India the comparable figure is 75-80 ‘encounter’ deaths. Roughly in the same 4:1 to 5:1 prisoners ratio between US and India.
So the major difference in arrest-related deaths is the noise levels. While noise levels seem lower in US, in India these encounter deaths have evoked a significant backlash. Even mobsters like Arun Gawli thinks he can protest against these deaths.
Secret Police
With the biggest secret service in the world, the largest prisoner population, in addition to one of the the largest police forces in the world.
Regarding figures for people employed in pure intelligence work, India has some 25,000 people in the Intelligence Bureau. Compared to 30-lakh employees in US Secret Service. So, Perry-bhau, we are talking of 25,000 intelligence operatives in India – versus US that has 30 lakhs.
The predominant target of the US secret police are the 70 million American males in the 18-60 years of age. Thousands of organisations, controlled by 17 apex American secret service agencies track these 70 million people.
Industrial Security
If Perry Anderson would like to include the CISF, in India’s ‘vast military, paramilitary and surveillance complex’, then would he like to include its Western equivalent – like private security, which has the same function?
A report commissioned by the US-DoJ estimates that the private sector provides about 1 million employees for industrial security. Another million by provided to US defence and government establishments by Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office (DISCO) through contractors. That is a total of two million private security personnel.
Indian private security industry is estimated at Rs.25,000-30,000 crores by value – and about three million by head count.
The elite did manage to drive away the ‘usurpers’. | After the evacuation of OCCUPY WALL STREET By Patrick Chappatte, The International Herald Tribune – 11/21/2011 12:00:00 AM
Anecdotal Evidence
Remember Bradley Manning. Dare I remind you of the another marine Brandon Raub. Probably you don’t have the courage to advise your Government after Obama has signed the NDAA Bill. So, no bail, only jail, if Daddy does not like you.
You got problems at home. Save your ideas and lectures where it is needed most.
Nearly a 100 countries in the world have a population that is lesser than the number of US citizens in prison, on parole or probation, or under prosecution by the State.
Of course! It clicks now.
After all, Britain the mother-country of Anglo-Saxon Bloc, first annihilated the native populations and then populated the entire continent of Australia with such people.
‘A staggering number of laws that sanction the use of coercive powers have been enacted in India,’ Arvind Verma writes. Noting that 53,000 people were arrested under the Terrorism and Disruptive Activities Act, of whom just 434 could be convicted seven years later, he underlines some daily realities of Indian democracy: ‘Torture is routinely practised in most police stations and death in police custody is a frequent phenomenon,’ while – nominally outside the jails themselves – ‘the police practice of getting rid of suspects through staged encounters is unfortunately all too common. Suspects against whom the police are unable to bring substantial evidence or those who are perceived to be dangerous are simply murdered.’ Nor, while the police are at work, have the military been idle. In the 1960s, the army was deployed ‘in aid of the civil power’ some 476 times, and in 1979-80 alone, 64 times; often ‘openly stationed so as to provide a perpetual reminder, and on occasion an actual expression, of the fact that the existing social and political order in India is only to be challenged by its critics at their peril’.
Let us compare again.
Big talk also means Big Walk. Questions on Assange By Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, UAE – 8/28/2012 12:00:00 AM
Behind Bars – Benchmark USA
Under all laws, all statutes, for all reasons, at all stages of prosecution, India has custodial population of 400,000 compared to the US with 2 million. N on -custodial prosecution figures are excluded from these figures.
Without getting technical or delicate, if we include all disappearances, encounter deaths as State Executions, the figure is less than the people executed in the US.
So …
Perry-bhau If our Indian Government wants to foolishly follow the Yumm-Rikan example, we will take care of it. Our Government! Our problem. Our solution. Don’t need no silly mindless, hectoring from you.
But I will limit it to one simple, suggestion. Give your gyaan to your YummRikan Government.
Related Articles
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- Retrieving a History: Responding to Perry Anderson on India (3quarksdaily.com)
- The Kashmir Story: A Western Narrative (quicktake.wordpress.com)
- Disposable America (counterpunch.org)
- Ken Macleod on George Orwell, Perry Anderson, Politics, and the English Language (delong.typepad.com)
- The Big Lie About Police Brutality (counterpunch.org)
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